SOURCE: "Malcolm Lowry: A Study of the Sea Metaphor in 'Under the Volcano'," in The University of Windsor Review, Vol. IV, No. 1, Fall, 1968, pp. 46-60.

In the following essay, Wild investigates Malcolm Lowry's complex use of the sea—primarily as a symbolic place of healing—in his novel Under the Volcano.

On the surface it would seem that Under the Volcano would not have anything at all to do with the sea in plot, or have an obvious sea metaphor. The very title suggests desert rather than ocean. Nevertheless, the ocean metaphor does play a very important role in this novel, and in a much more complex way than in Malcolm Lowry's first novel, Ultramarine.

In Ultramarine the sea metaphor is used in the traditional way established by writers like Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim, Herman Melville in Redburn, Billy Budd and Moby Dick, Conrad Aiken in Blue...